UK SVOD use increases to 10m homes

Subscriptions to video on demand (SVOD) services rose by 23% in 2017, Barb’s annual viewing report found.

Netflix is still the dominant SVOD provider, growing by 1.6 million households to reach 8.2 million. Though this was the largest number of new subscribers, the service grew at the slowest annual rate – 25%. Amazon Prime Video subscriptions increased by 41% ( 1.3 million) while Now TV grew by 40% ( 0.4 million).

According to the report, over half ( 55%) of children in the UK have access to at least one of these services, with the figure growing to 62% for 16- to 24-year-olds.

The report also found that unmatched viewing – when the TV is on but the content wasn’t broadcast in the past 28 days – accounted for 16% of TV set activity in 2017, up from 14% in 2016.

While full Project Dovetail data, which links device-based census data to Barb’s people-based panel data, is not yet available, the report includes findings from the Barb panel on PC and tablet audiences (smartphone data is not yet recorded).

The findings show that adults aged 16 to 34 are diverging most sharply in their viewing habits, comprising 24% of device viewing and 15% of viewing via a TV set. The 35-54 age group make up 33% of device viewers and 28% of TV watching, while over 55s are more likely to watch linear TV (they comprise 51% of TV viewing) and represent 35% of device viewing. Meanwhile, children’s share of device viewing ( 8.4%) edges their TV set viewing ( 6.5%).